Review: Like Crazy is One of the Year's Best

Director Drake Doremus’s Like Crazy is a beautiful, blunt visual thesis on the old adage, “Distance makes the heart grow fonder.”  Jacob (Anton Yelchin) and Anna (Felicity Jones) are college students who begin a relationship knowing that time is of the essence, as Anna’s visa is due to expire, marking her imminent return to England.  Her decision to stay with Jacob sets in motion a chain of red tape and legal walls that keep the young lovers apart at every turn, similarly keeping the audience away from a happy, neat love story that they may very well crave.

Like Crazy is so heart-wrenchingly effective because Doremus understands that film is, first and foremost, a visual medium.  Since the introduction of sound, narrative heavy-lifting has largely been left to dialogue or, more lazily, narration, but Doremus bucks these trends and allows images to communicate the bulk of the story.  The film’s most powerful, memorable moments come sans text yet achieve incredible clarity and coherence.  It’s a rare treat to see such a wonderful story told through such effective means.

The screenplay, which Doremus co-wrote with Ben York Jones, defies continuity in a way not unlike Ozu’s Late Spring.  Important events – often long stretches of time – occur off-screen, creating a disorienting narrative flow that consistently kicks in like a punch to the gut, as the viewer is left wondering how things could have changed so drastically since the last scene.  It’s a risky technique that pays off wonderfully, as it creates a relationship between viewer and film much like that between Jacob and Anna: just as the protagonists miss large chunks of each other’s lives, so we aren’t gifted with omniscience, but must instead piece together the romantic arc with the pieces Doremus allows us to see.

The screenplay also relies heavily on improvisation, meaning the chemistry between Yelchin and Jones isn’t merely palpable, but authentic, the result of two talented young actors giving themselves over to their characters and finding the romance in the way they can play off each other.  This gives a refreshing honesty to the awkward pauses that pepper the couple’s first few scenes together and a brutal poignancy to the pregnant ones that punctuate the film’s later scenes.  Yelchin and Jones make Jacob and Anna a couple you can believe, root for, and empathize with even in their more selfish, passive-aggressive moments.  This is love unfiltered, unedited, warts and all.

That the romance is so biting and swoon-worthy is a testament to the strength of the two young actors at the film’s heart.  Anton Yelchin has been a rising star in recent years, balancing smaller fare like the brilliantly funny Charlie Bartlett and The Beaver earlier this year (which also co-starred Jennifer Lawrence, who plays “The Other Woman” here) with more mainstream movies like Star Trek and the delightfully wicked Fright Night this summer.  Yelchin has always shown an impressive talent, but he’s never been able to create such a fully fleshed-out character as he does under Doremus’s trusting direction.  Yelchin is earnest without being saccharine, sweet without being cloying.  It’s a subtle turn that deserves more praise than it’s been garnering.

 

Though the reason Yelchin hasn’t been receiving his due praise is because he’s sharing the screen with Felicity Jones, who gives one of the year’s most impressive breakthrough performances (which is saying something considering the year we’re having).  It’s impossible not to fall in love with Jones’ Anna, so confident and whip-smart.  Most impressive is the way Jones reflects the overall visual thrust of the movie, saying so much without uttering a word.  Her wide, tearful eyes; her distracted shuffle; her barely emerging smile all give the audience a peek at the fragility and fear that occasionally rear their ugly heads.  It’s a star-making performance, and one of the year’s best.

About halfway through the film, Anna tells her editor that she doesn’t feel young, a sentiment echoed in the poignant final moments, when we find Jacob and Anna jaded, cynical – perhaps about relationships in general, or more likely specifically about their own.  Burdened by the bittersweet baggage of their tumultuous years (not) together, there’s something Gatsby-esque about their reunion: the freshness and romance are gone, as are the “kids that they [once were],” to echo the Stars song that plays over the credits.  Jacob and Anna have grown up, and perhaps have outgrown each other.  It’s a final moment of bittersweet gravity, and a perfect visual period to the beautiful love story Doremus has crafted.